Not a Race to the Finish

Overheard in shul: This has gotten out of hand. If we all have time to stand around schmoozing after shacharis, why are we flying through davening?

Overheard in shul: “I can’t daven as fast as they do.”

“Let me tell you something — They can’t daven as fast as they do, either.”

Overheard in shul: “Do you think anyone would be offended if I ran up in front of the omud after aleinu and waved a checkered flag?”

One of my rabbeim once remarked: “I like to think of myself as a ba’al teshuva, but the truth is I’ve become an FFB.”

The labels BT (ba’al teshuva) and FFB (frum from birth) don’t seem to be as much in vogue as they once were. Perhaps that’s a good thing; maybe it’s because of the number of distinguished talmidei chachomim among ba’alei teshuva. Then again, maybe it’s because the increased secular influence within many Orthodox precincts has blurred the distinction. Or maybe it’s because — tragically — so many of our children are at risk of going off the derech that it just doesn’t matter anymore.

But whatever the reason, I frequently revisit a comment my rosh yeshiva often made: Whether we’re FFBs or BTs, eventually we all become FWEs — frum without effort.

Complacency is a universal problem. Being born into a Torah home and community provides the confidence and competence that make it easy to coast through perfunctory observance. It also creates an illusion of spiritual maturity that deludes many ba’alei teshuva into believing that once they have adopted the same demeanor of casual observance then they have “made it.”

All the mussar drashos in the world can’t seem to shake us out of our collective comfort zone. And nowhere is that more evident than in davening.

I doubt if I will ever forget the first shemoneh esrei I davened in Loshon Hakodesh. I arrived at Ohr Somayach three decades ago as one of many “off the Wall” Jews, intercepted at the kosell by Jeff Seidel as I was backpacking from from continent to another. I’d never had a bar mitzvah ceremony, and I didn’t even know aleph-beis. I learned to daven in English out of the old Birnbaum siddur, with its tiny print and King Jamesian translation. Acquiring a functional knowledge of Hebrew was a slow and painful process.

Eventually, I decided I had to take the plunge. One afternoon, I went up to my room to daven mincha in Loshon Hakodesh. That first shemoneh esrei took me 45 agonizing minutes. I struggled through every word, with no kavanah except to push through to the end.

I suspect that I’ve never received as much reward in the next world for any shemoneh esrei since.

My second attempt took only 30 minutes, and after a week or so I’d gotten my time down to 20 minutes, just quick enough to take three steps back as the yeshiva mincha minyan was finishing aleinu.

And there I got stuck. For weeks, I couldn’t shave another minute off my time. I lamented that, for the rest of my life, I would be davening 20 a minute shemoneh esrei.

Halavai. If only it were so.

Finally, I did have my breakthrough. My times got faster and faster. Ultimately, I was able to memorize shemoneh esrei and daven with my eyes closed, finishing as fast as almost anyone in shul. I had made it!

Until I realized that I hadn’t. Then began the long, uncomfortable process of learning how to slow down.

Slowing down, however, is easier said than done. Davening as part of a tzibbur is meant to enhance the experience of prayer. There’s an energy generated by a quorum, all the more so when the members of the congregation share a reverence for the place and the purpose that has brought them together.

But it’s also easy to get carried along with the current, even if it means slurring words together and ignoring what they mean. No one likes the feeling of being left behind, so we push ourselves to keep up even as we realize our tefillos are suffering by doing so.

Which is tragic. It takes only the most cursory study of the siddur for us to recognize what we’re missing when we zip through davening. The richness, the depth, the poetry, and the inspiration that Chazal put into their composition is at our fingertips, and we don’t even notice as it passes before our eyes at mach speed.

Worse still, because we get so little out of davening, our behavior in shul deteriorates. The latest headlines, baseball scores, community politics, and our text alerts seem a lot more relevant than the prayers we don’t give ourselves time to think about. Even if we’re learning rather than talking, the implicit message we’re sending to others — and ourselves — is that davening is merely a duty to discharge before returning to more important matters. Moreover, faster davening begets even faster davening, since no one speaks out against those who are eager to find any excuse to speed up.

And worst of all: our children are watching us, learning to do what we’re doing. Is this really how we want to fulfill vishinantam l’vonecho?

The truth is, if we devoted even a few minutes a day to learning about tefillah we wouldn’t want to daven so fast. Listen to Rav Schwab’s words on asher nosan lasechvi binah:

“In the early morning, as the day breaks, we have a wonderful feeling of anticipating the beginning of a new day. We look forward to it with happy expectancy. It is for this emotion — this pleasant, hopeful optimism, which the crowing of the rooster evokes in our hearts — that we give thanks…

“[J]ust as the rooster has been given the ability by HaKadosh Baruch Hu to distinguish between day and night, while the difference is hardly noticeable, and announces it to the world with his loud crowing, so too has HaKadosh Baruch Hu given the Jewish people the mandate to enlighten the world with the great truths taught by the Torah, even if the world is still ‘dark.’”

And this is just one small idea from the first bracha of the morning. How profoundly can we transform our davening — and our entire day — if we let these lofty sentiments take root in our minds instead of rattling off like the names of racehorses on the backstretch at Churchill Downs.

Any aficionado would be aghast at someone knocking back 21-year-old scotch or wolfing down a gourmet meal, and it would never occur to us to ask the conductor to speed up his performance of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony so the audience can get to go home earlier. Shouldn’t we want to be connoisseurs of prayer? Shouldn’t we want to savor every word of tefillah the way a wine enthusiast lets fine Cabernet roll over his tongue?

So what can we do about it? Here are a few strategies for more inspired davening.

Invest 5 minutes. Anyone can find five free minutes in a day. Read a paragraph or two in Rav Schwab on Prayer. Once you start, I guarantee that you won’t want to stop.

Come early. If you run into davening late, you’re finished before you start. Playing catch-up is perfect recipe for tefillah without kavanah. What’s more, we say every morning that coming early to davening is counted among those things for which we’re rewarded in this world and the next. Why are we willing to give up such an easy windfall?

Turn off the phone and use a siddur. We get distracted easily enough without having the ultimate source of distraction right before our eyes.

Don’t sit with friends. Our relationship with others can wait while we focus on our relationship with G-d. There are enough hours in the day for socializing that we can devote an hour or two each day to our Creator. Especially on Shabbos and Yom Tov, remove the temptation to talk by minimizing the opportunity.

Add personal prayers. Stop yourself from being an automaton by inserting personal requests in Shema Koleinu. We all have something we want. Three times a day we have a personal audience with the King of kings. How can we squander such an opportunity?

Find allies. There must be a few other people in shul who would like the minyan to slow down. Form a coalition and approach the rav. Maybe he’d also like to reclaim his minyan from the speed-demons who have hijacked it.

There’s no reason to be embarrassed about wanting to slow down. It’s worth recalling the story about a bochur who worried that the Gerrer Rebbe had mistakenly inferred that he was new to Yiddishkeit. “Rebbe,” he said, “I’m not a ba’al teshuva.”